


Alaric's classroom, 3.15 PM

by pleasebekidding



Category: Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-24
Updated: 2012-11-24
Packaged: 2017-11-19 09:15:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/571671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pleasebekidding/pseuds/pleasebekidding
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jeremy goes to Alaric's classroom to sit quietly, sometimes. This time, Tyler followed him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Alaric's classroom, 3.15 PM

**Author's Note:**

> For Tatum.

Jeremy sat in Alaric’s classroom some afternoons, for a minute, or for an hour. Looked at Alaric’s desk. Not his desk. Not anymore.

Jeremy needed Alaric.

Alaric was gone.

Jeremy sometimes talked, at home, talked like he hoped Alaric might hear him. Told him nonsensical stories about his day. _Got a B in trig_ , he would say, or _Matt can’t keep feeding Elena his blood every second day. Damon needs to talk to them. Can you give him a nudge?_

But in Alaric’s classroom, Jeremy just sat. There were echoes in the walls. No one was using it yet so the echoes stayed. There were the faint remains of Alaric’s handwriting on the chalk board and Jeremy told himself he could smell the scent of Alaric, too, old bourbon and clean sweat and the aftershave he wore.

Jeremy sighed.

The door began to open. It was a shock. No one ever came here. No one Jeremy knew of, anyway. He wondered about Damon, sometimes, but…

Jeremy was about to pick up his bag, and make his apologies to whoever it was, but Tyler stepped inside, and closed the door behind him.

“Don’t start, Ty,” Jeremy said, shaking his head. “I really can’t, today.”

Tyler didn’t speak. He dropped his back pack on the ground by the desk, and leaned against it. Crossed his arms over his chest (Jeremy couldn’t help but look at the way the muscles in his arms popped, and remember what it was like to be wrapped in them – so long ago now, too long ago. So much had changed), and just stood.

“What are you doing here?” Jeremy asked. Tyler shrugged lightly, shook his head. Seemed he wouldn’t say. He was waiting for Jeremy to speak. “I come here,” Jeremy said unnecessarily. “Sometimes.”

Tyler cocked his chin, and waited.

“I miss him.” Jeremy glanced at the desk, the hearts drawn across the top edge. They looked like hearts Caroline would draw and it made Jeremy wonder where Caroline sat, in this class. An odd thought. Knowing exactly what your classroom looks like when it’s your classroom. But with a different group, it would be an alien land. Alliances would be different. Girls would sit in columns to pass notes to each other. Boys would sit alongside them and sneak glimpses. Where did Tyler sit?

“Where did you sit?”

Tyler raised an eyebrow, and pointed.

Yes, close to the window. Made sense. Probably he spent a lot of time staring out of it. Alaric would have rapped his knuckle on the desk, from time to time, to snap Tyler out of it, but truth be told, Alaric was easier on all of them than he needed to be. Knew their real battle were being fought elsewhere. Marked them a little higher than he needed to. Not Jeremy, though. Jeremy he was hard on.

“He said a few months ago – I got a C minus on a history paper and I asked him why. He said the only way I was gonna have a normal life was to get the best marks I could – study hard, you know, and get the fuck out of here. Go to college as far away from here as I… West coast, he said, but I always wanted to…”

“Rhode Island,” Tyler quipped. “School of Design.”

The circumstances under which Jeremy had first  shared that little tidbit made him blush. Tyler had been draped over Jeremy, slicked with sweat, come cooling on his chest. He had his nose up against Jeremy’s throat. Smelling him, Jeremy thought, because Tyler was a wolf, then, but he wasn’t yet a vampire. His body had been warm and heavy and they’d lain together a long time like that. Tyler usually freaked out right after the sex and left, but that night, he’d stayed. They had talked. About life away from Mystic Falls, mostly, but other stuff too.

For the first time ever Jeremy had fallen asleep with his arms wrapped around Tyler and it had been so goo, so good.

But so long ago.

Jeremy sighed, and met Tyler’s eyes again. “I suppose you think it’s stupid. I’ll be lucky to survive senior year, especially without…”

“He taught you, Jer,” Tyler said quietly. “You’ve got that.”

Jeremy looked at the ring on his hand. Wondered, as he often did, if he was also paying some terrible price that would later be collected.

All these deaths.

“I’m totally alone,” Jeremy said. He was sort of absently surprised by the lack of emotion in his voice since actually, with someone standing in front of him he felt oddly like he was going to fall apart, at last. Was going to put his head on this desk and let the tears fall and that was going to suck, because Tyler would tell him to _man up and stop being such a fucking pussy, Gilbert_. “My parents. Jenna. My… Elena’s a vampire. She’s like a different person. Alaric… I needed him, man. I fucking needed him. Not as some ghost I can’t even get to materialise. I needed him to yell at me to do my English homework and kick my ass when I got high and take me to college campuses next year.”

Tyler glanced out the window, at his feet, at the door – there, his eyes lingered – and back at Jeremy.

Jeremy unfolded his long frame from the desk, picked up his satchel by the strap, and took a few steps forward. “I got a shift at the Grill,” he mumbled, as he walked past Tyler, but Tyler put a hand out and plucked at Jeremy’s t-shirt. Jeremy turned, wary, and Tyler slipped his finger into the loop of Jeremy’s belt, tugging him closer. Still leaning against the desk.

Jeremy tended not to trust anything good that happened to him. Still he held Tyler’s eyes a moment, and let himself be tugged closer. He tried not to, tried but he licked his lips, Jesus fuck, Tyler would have a field day, he’d never hear the end of it.

Except that Tyler had a hand over Jeremy’s hip, and the other was moving slowly up Jeremy’s spine, teasing at the bumps, to settle over the back of his neck.

They met half-way, in the end, after a few long moments where Jeremy really wasn’t sure if the circuit would ever be closed. He met Tyler’s eyes, just as they fell closed, and then their mouths were pressed together.

It was Tyler who parted his lips first, Tyler, who let his tongue slip out and taste the swell of Jeremy’s bottom lip. Tyler who got greedy and pulled Jeremy’s body nearer, made Jeremy feel wanted. It was Tyler, and Jeremy was relieved, because he couldn’t have done it otherwise.

Tyler explored Jeremy’s mouth, tested the edge of his teeth, ran his tongue over Jeremy’s soft palate, and when he began to pull away, he tugged gently at Jeremy’s bottom lip with his teeth.

“You’re not. You know. Alone,” Tyler said, like it was the hardest thing he’d ever said. Maybe it was. The fact that he was there at all when someone could conceivably walk in was foreign enough.

(How Jeremy loathed being stuck in a high school in small town Virginia where the worst imaginable insult was ‘fag’.)

Jeremy held Tyler’s eyes a moment, and nodded, stepping away, and Tyler lead him out of the classroom. Out to the parking lot, where they climbed into Tyler’s car and pulled away silently. Tyler drove Jeremy to the Grill, idling the car on the street.

“What time do you finish?”

“Midnight,” Jeremy answered, opening the door.

Tyler lifted his back pack, and slung it over his shoulder. “I’ll pick you up.”

Jeremy watched the car disappear down main street, and thought he felt Alaric’s hand on his shoulder.

 


End file.
